ABC mission creep

Top stories from June 16:

Britney says “back off”

Britney Spears' string of unfortunate encounters with the media is taking its toll on the pregnant singer. She's told US television her biggest wish is for the paparazzi to "leave her alone".

Married to the job

Hollywood actress Renee Zellweger has warned fellow Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman to call off her wedding to country music superstar Keith Urban. Renee's told a friend that Keith's too much of a workaholic.

Delta ditches mum as manager

Aussie songstress Delta Goodrem has dumped her mum Lea as her manager, to sign on with boyfriend Brian McFadden's management instead. She says the break was a mutual decision.

Want to have a guess at who put these stories top of the agenda? One of Rupert's tabloids? The UK gutter press? The National Enquirer? Nope. It was your ABC. Or more precisely, its pop culture blog, The Shallow End.

So how did we get to the point where the ABC, the national public broadcaster, has decided that it should publish celebrity gossip as a regular feature on its website? It seems to me that we need to re_examine the reason for the existence of the ABC in order to see how the current incarnation is a long way from where it should be. In short, the ABC has undergone what military planners might call “mission creep”.

The reason that governments choose to perform a service is because a free market cannot perform it effectively: market failure. We therefore have governments providing universal school education, public parks and libraries, all of which are considered to both have a redeeming social benefit and be lacking were market forces to be operating alone. These are things that produce a “positive externality” - a social benefit - that makes them publicly desirable but privately unprofitable.

Where the market can provide a good or service effectively, however, then this is vastly preferable to state provision. This is the pervasive logic of capitalism in a liberal democracy, and one that explains the relative affluence we enjoy today.

In the areas of broadcasting, there is market failure. Left to their own devices, commercial broadcasters would produce news, current affairs and educational programs that were insufficient in both quantity and quality. These types of programs are undesirable for commercial broadcasters since they are usually costly to produce and are of limited appeal. They are also the sorts of programs that are most likely to be interfered with by a malevolent proprietor. They are, however essential to a functioning democracy. They inform the population, scrutinise government and foster intelligent, critical thought: in economic terms, these things are the “positive externalities” of news and current affairs broadcasting.

However, this market failure is limited to a narrow range of programming. There is no market failure in the broadcast of reality TV. Nor game shows. Nor football matches. Or music videos, pop music or naff talk shows. Or celebrity gossip. All of these things are very successfully provided for by the commercial media, where consumer demand is met by supply on a commercially successful basis. There is no great positive externality generated by the broadcast of these sorts of programs: they add nothing to our democracy or society that wouldn’t be present if commercial broadcasters were to broadcast the material.

So what is sometimes considered the single market for broadcasting are actually several markets: one for news and current affairs, and another for entertainment. In the former, market failure demands state intervention, while in the latter the market operates successfully. Despite this distinction, the ABC has taken it upon itself to participate in all parts of the market: it is trying to be an all-singing, all-dancing something-for-everyone media conglomerate. In doing so, it is doing more harm than good.

With a limited budget, understandably so given the competition for government resources, the ABC needs to be frugal in its spending. Every dollar spent on lightweight entertainment broadcasting is a dollar not spent on news, current affairs and educational programs. This creates the absurd situation within the ABC of Newscaf (news and current affairs), which goes a long way toward the ABC fulfilling its core purpose, competing for funds and airtime against frothy entertainment programs, which best belong in the commercial media and do little toward fulfilling the ABC’s purpose.

It’s scandalous for the ABC to put its hand out for more money while simultaneously spending its existing funds so poorly. This is not an argument against the ABC: it’s instead an argument for a dramatic reorganisation of priorities.

The argument often put up in defence of a bit-of-everything ABC is that it needs to broaden its audience. This is superficially appealing, but intellectually deceptive. The ABC could broaden its audience tomorrow were it to abandon its current schedule and broadcast nothing but sport and titillation. There would, however, be public outrage, and rightfully so. Why? Because achieving populism by abandoning its raison d’être would be no achievement at all.

There’s nothing inherently meritorious about watching the ABC: it’s only when the ABC is broadcasting programs of quality and substance that an audience gains something from it. While not quite at the “footy and nudity” stage yet, the logic against populism for the sake of populism holds true. If the ABC doesn’t rate well, that’s fine. So long as it is broadcasting something worthwhile. This is what separates it from its commercial rivals.

The reality is that at present the ABC can barely be distinguished from these commercial rivals. Apart from the particularly egregious example identified at the start, there is plenty of ABC content that sits at the lightweight end of the spectrum. Numerous bland chat shows dominate the ABC TV schedule, usually involving insubstantial nonsense (Agony Aunts, Spicks and Specks, Can We Help?). The direction of ABC local radio is also alarming, with much news content driven out of the schedule, only to be replaced by painfully inane banter and talkback.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this sort of content, so long as it can pay its own way in commercial media. When it’s the taxpayer-funded commercial-free ABC that is broadcasting the content, however, we have a severe case of role confusion.

So far there’s been plenty of debate about whether the ABC is biased. This is an important debate, but perhaps more fundamental is the debate over what role the ABC should perform: whether it should be an important component of a vibrant democracy, or a pale imitation of its commercial rivals. With a taxpayer-funded ABC blog devoted to the antics of Britney and Delta, it seems to be a debate that needs to be had.